Wow lost another 300k subs this quarter

Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Deathwing will be in patch 4.3. Icecrown Citadel was in patch 3.3, so it sounds about right in terms of major content releases. It's just not going to take a whole year to push out. TBC was an exception with Sunwell Plateau (2.4), but I think they actually wanted to end it at Black Temple but ended up extending it.
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I thought there was going to be a raid in Vashj'ir, Abyssal Maw or somesuch.
 
Yeah, another planned-but-scrapped area (read: not broken promises :D). I think it was a 5-man dungeon but don't quote me on that.
 
Sycraft said:
They really do seem to have run out of ideas, which is too bad. I had wondered what was coming with Cataclysm since it was their first "new story" expansion. All the others were just expanding and flushing out on the world that had already been introduced in Warcraft. However they had run all that out and had to add new stuff. No problem I would have thought, given that they invented all the original Warcraft stuff. However it really was rather underwhelming.
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Not sure what you mean by that...Cho'gall and Deathwing were introduced before Arthas was, so they're not really "new".

I will say that their implementation into the game was terribly executed; both Cho'gall and Deathwing have tons of lore behind them, yet Arthas was made out to be the big-bad poster boy of the Warcraft universe while Cho'gall and Deathwing get the shaft as far as lore goes.
 
Arthas was human. People can relate to humans easier than ogres or dragons.

It's not odd that a human story that began and ended within the Warcraft Universe that the games encompass would be front and center. Deathwing and Cho'gall predate the universe of the games; they are things immovable and unchangeable by mere mortals. Why would they get front and center?

Learn how to tell a good story before you bash on Blizzard telling theirs.
 
Dreaz said:
Learn how to tell a good story before you bash on Blizzard telling theirs.
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There was no philistine sun outside today, scorching the poor denizens of this vast urban landscape on this day with the unrelenting heat. But there was rain. Rain fell off the edges of roofs across town, splashing into rain gutters or splattering the grass and walkways below. The sound of water was constant, as if the sky was a giant faucet that the gods must have forgotten to turn off.

Out in the rain, the lean figure of the Man Fail appeared, surveying the bleakness of the urban landscape that stretched as far as the eye could see. He noticed a mark on the dilpidated building across the street from where he stood next to a phone booth. It was the symbol that could be identified as [H].

Fail ventured closer to the building to get a better look, there was a set of stairs leading downward to a door with a sliding peephole in it, for someone to open, identify the person outside wanting entrance, then deciding to admit or deny the person entry.

The Man Fail came up to the door, and knocked. Cursing greeted his ears as he could hear the heavy footfalls of someone approaching. A hand slid back the peephole and a pair of piercing eyes greeted the Man Fail as the person on the other side gave him a through look. Those eyes seemed dark and heavy, as if they had never ventured out into the light.

"Who are you?", demanded the bouncer.

"The Man Fail, he who writes a good story," said the fearless Fail.

"Ah, I'm Dreaz, I didn't think you could do it, welcome, welcome!"

And with that, the door opened and Fail stepped inside, and surveyed the room, it was full of electronic goodness. Off in one corner was quad-fire rigs, in another, triple SLI configured rigs, and all of them were manned by people playing World of Starcraft.

However, there was a desktop encased in platinum with a chair covered in gold before it, with a soft ostrich cushion on it, and apparently it was empty. The Man Fail approached the desktop and sat down, and logged into World of Starcraft.
 
Dreaz said:
Arthas was human. People can relate to humans easier than ogres or dragons.

It's not odd that a human story that began and ended within the Warcraft Universe that the games encompass would be front and center. Deathwing and Cho'gall predate the universe of the games; they are things immovable and unchangeable by mere mortals. Why would they get front and center?

Learn how to tell a good story before you bash on Blizzard telling theirs.
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I'm not complaining about Arthas being front-and-center so much; what I'm really a little upset about is the fact that all throughout WotLK, Arthas' presence was felt by the player. He was acknowledged by the player as the "must beat" villain, otherwise the world we know it will be no more. Even if you didn't read any of the quest text in the WotLK zones (which is great, btw), you knew who he was, and you realized how important it was that someone put an end to him.

Cho'gall and Deathwing...not so much the same treatment. Cho'gall, understandable, because despite having a lot of lore, he's only the end boss of the a first-tier raid. Deathwing, on the other hand, is supposed to be the main baddie of Cataclysm, yet we've seen very little of him other than the cinematic and the one quest chain in Twilight Highlands. He changed the face of Azeroth forever (overnight, in one patch), and then basically kinda just disappeared.

I don't have a problem with Arthas being the poster boy, I have a problem with Blizzard spending so much time on making sure Arthas was such a prominent villain that Deathwing, by comparison, is somewhat cast aside, despite being one of the most powerful beings in existence. The whole concept of the "Cataclysm" expansion is rather lackluster; from the elemental invasion event to the overnight-shattering to the lack of an evil presence, there doesn't seem to be much going on. I will admit that this is from an 80-85 perspective; I have not leveled a new character and I'm sure that the new leveling process really gives you a sense of living in a world on the brink of chaos. The 80-85 experience, though, manages to capture some of that feeling, but not very strongly, IMHO.

To be fair, there wasn't much villain spotlighting going on in vanilla or TBC either, I'll give you that. Nobody really knew who Ragnaros was. Kel'thuzad was a familiar name, but not really given much spotlight either. Illidan, despite being made the "main villain" of TBC, didn't get much love either, although we already knew a lot about him from WC3 and the SMV quests did shed some light on him. But with Arthas, Blizzard really outdid themselves and took it to a whole new level of storytelling - something that I feel is missing with Deathwing.

Of course its easier for the player to relate to a human (well, former human) than to an ogre or a dragon, but that doesn't make it impossible. Deathwing actually has a very interesting history that I'm sure could have been told better in Cataclysm, yet they failed to deliver. I'm fairly certain that the average player doesn't know much about Deathwing other than that he's a big angry iron-clad dragon who wants to burn the world, but the average player was able to learn quite a bit about Arthas just from doing the quests alone.

Last but not least, your last sentence irks me a little. I'm not claiming to be the best storyteller in the world, or to even be able to tell a story well at all, but that doesn't have any bearing on my ability to judge a story. I will agree that I don't fully know what kind of work goes into telling a story through a video game, and I'm sure that it has its own set of challenges that Blizzard works very hard to overcome, but that doesn't invalidate my opinion or whether or not they are doing a good job at it. Just because one cannot sing very well does not mean one cannot know a good or a bad singer when one hears it.
 
I hated what they did with the Lich King, they turned him into fucking Dr Claw. Also the Lich King was not Arthas, Arthas was gone, period. All that gay crap about him still being there and being good and holding back the scourge or some shit, retarded. Arthas was evil before he even got close to Frostmourne. Ulduar was the best part of WotLK.
 
Valshistixol said:
I hated what they did with the Lich King, they turned him into fucking Dr Claw. Also the Lich King was not Arthas, Arthas was gone, period. All that gay crap about him still being there and being good and holding back the scourge or some shit, retarded. Arthas was evil before he even got close to Frostmourne. Ulduar was the best part of WotLK.
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I don't like what they did with him as far as how the story unfolded. It was very generic IMO and that "there must always be a lich king" crap made me go :rolleyes: But at the very least, they made his presence known to the player throughout the entire expansion.

Ulduar...I agree with you on that, probably one of if not THE best raid ever put into this game.
 
As if it's not painfully obvious blizzard is shifting their focus to other games and probably the new mmo. There's just no much left for them to do in wow. Face it MMO's have a life cycle and while wow will always be around it's at the end of it's life cycle so to speak.
 
J Macker said:
I just installed WoW and started playing for the first time because of the level 20 free to play.

I played it for about 2 hours and got to level 6; seems like the level 20 is just around the corner and could be done easily in 10 hours.

Even on an Eyefinity setup with maxed graphics, the graphics make my eyes hurt. I don't think I can tolerate it, even if there is good gameplay.

I think I'll play more Borderlands this weekend.
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The game really starts to get good when you are playing with other people and have a defined role. When you start doing dungeons they start off pretty easy and anyone can do basically anything, but as you level more (well passed 20 and therefore the 'free' content) the difficulty starts to get a little harder and you can feel important by fulfulling the tank/healer/dps role. Then once you reach max level the roles are even more profoundly defined as you start raiding.

The game really is truly fun at max level, where is where most people are already.
 
I just installed WoW and started playing for the first time because of the level 20 free to play.

I played it for about 2 hours and got to level 6; seems like the level 20 is just around the corner and could be done easily in 10 hours.

Even on an Eyefinity setup with maxed graphics, the graphics make my eyes hurt. I don't think I can tolerate it, even if there is good gameplay.

I think I'll play more Borderlands this weekend.
 
Make your eyes hurt? I honestly think they look great, in its own unique way, they world is full of a TON of color, they make it look quite good considering.

My big gripe is the character models looking ancient, and NPC models etc. they rehash WAY too much.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Deathwing will be in patch 4.3. Icecrown Citadel was in patch 3.3, so it sounds about right in terms of major content releases. It's just not going to take a whole year to push out. TBC was an exception with Sunwell Plateau (2.4), but I think they actually wanted to end it at Black Temple but ended up extending it.
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It still seems like cataclysm is missing a tier.

In Vanilla you had 4 tiers of raiding instances:
1. Molten core
2. Blackwing Lair
3. Ahn'Qiraj
4. Naxxramus


In burning crusade you had 4 tiers of raiding instances
1. Karazhan/Gruul's Lair/Magtheridon
2. Serpentshrine Cavern / Tempest Keep
3. Mt Hyjal / Black Temple
4. Sunwell

in Wrath of the litch king you had 4 tiers of raiding instances:
1. Naxxramaus/Malygos/Obsidian Sanctum
2. Ulduar
3. Trial of the Crusader / Champion (don't remember which one was the raiding one)
4. Ice Crown Citadel

now in Cataclysm we have 3 tiers with deathwing being planned as the 3rd tier roughly 1 year after the release Wotlk. Unless they thrown in some extra random tier after deathwing then Cata will have less tiers then previous expansions and seeminly will be out for less time (unless they really plan for people to go an entire year on Deathwing)



Trimlock said:
Bring back deathwing was lazy story writing. Dead, comes back, dead again, turned into the million dollar dragon, becomes the main bad guy. Titans is a good area to go into, they have tons of content to go off of, introduce a ton of stuff players have yet to experience and none of it is rehashed. Putting in a rehashed deathwing throws the story off and damages it more with the players then if they would of brought in something completely random.
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That sounds like the entire story of cataclysm: rehashed stuff. Oh look Ragnaros is back, ZA is back, ZG is Back, Nefarion is back, Ashkandi is Back, Sulfuras is back.

Godmachine said:
And for void storage of old gear :
Anything stored there will lose all gems and enchantments.
Wow ..that's lame.
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It's meant to be a place where you keep the crap that you have for sentimental purposes not raiding purposes. Is it really going to ruin your day that much if your gloves no longer have their level 60 enchant on them? From a techinical perspective not keeping gemming/enchantment/reforging information saves a decent amount of space when you are talking about millions or billions of items. You should have plenty of bank space in your bank for all the gear that you need to actually keep enchanted. Hell I have a spare bag in my bank and even with keeping all the old stuff that I don't use anymore around.
 
TheGrey: glad someone more people agree with me on cata being rehashed as far as the expansion goes.
 
They need arial combat and or sea combat. Guild motherships ftw....that will make things interesting ;)
 
i had my wow fun from bc to wotlk. now the game just seems very boring. not to mention unbalanced.
 
aintz said:
i had my wow fun from bc to wotlk. now the game just seems very boring. not to mention unbalanced.
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Vanilla had the most unbalancing issues then any expansion, hell they never really tried and that was the most funtime in wow!
 
Trimlock said:
Vanilla had the most unbalancing issues then any expansion, hell they never really tried and that was the most funtime in wow!
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Back then everything was fun because it was so new. Unfortunately, its impossible to recapture that feeling no matter what they try to do.

I'm still having fun playing the game; it's just a different "kind" of fun than I was having when I first start playing in vanilla.
 
TheGreySpectre said:
That sounds like the entire story of cataclysm: rehashed stuff. Oh look Ragnaros is back, ZA is back, ZG is Back, Nefarion is back, Ashkandi is Back, Sulfuras is back.
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It is. Firelands is Molten Bore 2.0. Looks like 4.3 is more rehash.... AQ 20 / 40 made into 5 mans, and instead of offering REAL armor customization they let us recycle old armor sets. You would think they could do better after raking in two billion+ a year from this game.
 
I have not read this, source? From what i have read 4.3 will include 3 new 5mans all raid related similar to how the icc 5mans where.
 
SLiGuy said:
Back then everything was fun because it was so new. Unfortunately, its impossible to recapture that feeling no matter what they try to do.

I'm still having fun playing the game; it's just a different "kind" of fun than I was having when I first start playing in vanilla.
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No you can't bring it back but you can keep it going. Once its lost you can't get it back. They just seem to not care.
 
xenios said:
I have not read this, source? From what i have read 4.3 will include 3 new 5mans all raid related similar to how the icc 5mans where.
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Yeah I haven't read anything about that either. This would have been front page news on mmo-champ by now. But there is a revamped Darkmoon Faire in the works. Brings back memories when I got Orb of the Darkmoon, my first epic item that I farmed for before I hit 60 to wear it. :D
 
Vanilla WoW was great because of the newness and actual helpful community. Now trade is filled with idiots who think they can make a difference in the world by talking politics.

On the other hand, WoW gameplay mechanics is much improved. I think back to raiding as a pally, all i did was cast Rank4 flash of light nonstop on the tank, and rebuff everyone single target mid battle (5 minute buff, no group targeting). Sometimes I even took the role of out of combat ressing. 40 man raids had a cool epic feel to it, but getting 40 competent people to raid was nearly impossible unless you joined a 5-nights a week raiding guild. 10 and 25 man versions allow raids to cut the fat as opposed to bringing in a 6 paladin just for salvation buff.

As much fun as I had leveling a character to 60 for the first time in vanilla, I couldnt go without
Dual Specs
A rolling system where plate can be needed by cloth wearers
Stupidly long attunement quests
70 minutes of trash for the first boss
Linking Professions in chat
Daily quests for money
Normal and heroic raids
Broader class coverage (I hated needing a mage for CC)
Flying in azeroth

Does it make the game easier, hell yes. It makes out of combat mechanics better so its not a wall to the real content in WoW, raids and dungeons. Anyone who wants to spend 30+ hours to farm for gear just so they can start learning an encounter (a la MC rag) should just play the grind-heavy games like FFXIV,
 
Flying mounts, hell mounts in general (in most mmo's, not just WoW) could do with actually FEELING LIKE A FUCKING MOUNT.

All mounts are is a movespeed buff with a model attached to you. It doesn't "feel" like you're riding an animal or flying around (mainly flying because you can't have any speed variation, like you'd expect in birds or planes, plus the face you can't roll over, etc).
 
blizzard can loose 90% of their base over the next ten years and wow will still be profitable in the end, no body cares.
 
Winwolf said:
blizzard can loose 90% of their base over the next ten years and wow will still be profitable in the end, no body cares.
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Yeah, it's a scalable business model, the less players the less servers they need, the less staff etc, they wont ever start becoming unprofitable until they're only running 1-2 servers, even then blizzard will have made so much money they will probably keep them running forever at a loss, the amount of money they have made from the game is quite silly really if you work out the subs multiplied by the time its been running and the player base.
 
Well i think they should chang old raids with new expansions so they aren't solo able
 
I think bringing back old raids in the form of 5 mans would be a good idea if it wasn't in place of actual new content. There seems to be a lack of new ideas and creativity going back to mid-wotlk.
 
Can one game last forever, even with expansions? No, of course not. I'd like to know where the players are going? I hope to god many of them have not taken to breeding.

During the Vanilla period I think WoW was an incomparable experience because of the social aspect of it. You met people, adventured and explored, it was an experience. It was like when the dude in Avatar wakes up as his avatar in this whole new world. Then at some point it just became this grind where everyone has been through it before and there was no joy in it. All good things must end at some point, I guess.

You'd need a whole new engine, a whole new generation of MMORPG to come close to recreating WoW. I doubt it will happen for some years.
 
One thing I noticed over the years (though most people don't really care) is that the world decorations seemed to become more and more sloppy over time unless at very specific locations (quest hubs etc.). I think the ability to fly was a major contributor for this. The old world design had more rolling hills and more unique stuff around the ground. It was designed to be walked through. Now the terrain has more sharp, low-poly angles with more generic texture placement, even in the capital city Org, as though it was designed to be flown over.
 
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